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Possibly the game we’re most excited about in 2012, Arkane’s immersive sim has just broken cover after a few months of silence. This first full-length trailer is, alas, entirely pre-rendered, but it does show off the rather tasty world-design, the parkour element, the plot set-up and some of protagonist Corvo’s primary abilities. Killing me won’t solve anything, so have a watch of this instead.

Is it really an ‘immersive sim’? Well, I genuinely hope so, and Arkane made some noises to that effect, but it’s hard to say if it lives up to those dark legacies we so love until we’ve seen more of it in action first-hand. Soon…

Games for Windows is a set of standards and certifications that games follow, and they get the Games for Windows tag. Things like an Easy Install option, compatibility with x64 systems, widescreen support, parental controls, compatibility with Win7 features like Game Explorer, Media Centre. There’s nothing wrong with Games for Windows in the slightest.

Hating every implementation of GFW-Live thus far, is not unnecessary or baseless. In every game I’ve heard of where it has appeared, it has caused errors and frustrations. There have been few benefits, and not enough to outweigh the problems. It isn’t the only annoying application that games are saddled with, but it’s still not a good thing, and I can’t think of any instance where not having GFW:L wouldn’t have made for a better experience.

Quite. I really miss the days when a game trailer consisted of a splash screen and a few short, scattered moments of gameplay. I don’t miss the generic heavy guitar riff soundtracks that usually accompanied them though.

I agree on the power, the trailer did a great job of portraying the player as vulnerable what with all the desperate running around, but that made for an odd contrast with the stop-time-kill-everyone thing.

Of course it’s a trailer with very limited time, so I guess it’s to be expected that they’d fit an unrepresentative amount of power use into it.

Totally agree about the killing won’t solve anything bit, I love how the guy says that it won’t solve anything then the tagline is, “REVENGE SOLVES EVERYTHING”.
Also that introduces the main theme I guess. Does revenge solve anything?

The timings impeccable, a split second longer and it’d be suggesting he took the time to listen to reason and disregarded it, any quicker & it’d have seemed like he was trying to shut him up, they got it bang on the nonchalant assassin trope (which is a good thing!)

Yeah, there was a very nice sense that the only reason he got to say all that is because it took Corvo that long to kill him. No half-hour long conversation, no confession or debate or repentance, oh no, kill him, then out the window.

I dunno, re: bugginess, the community has usually been pretty good with picking up where Bethesda left off, since they make everything so moddable. The unofficial patches for each of their games have solved thousands of issues each.

I’m more concerned about the depth of their games than about the bugginess. Open world is all well and good, but I’ve found that their approach of slowly getting marginally better at everything, rather than gaining any new abilities that really shake up the dynamic — and having everyone else get marginally better at everything right along with you — lends itself to a total snoozefest. “Oh, I got a tiny bit better at blocking. Nice. Except now everything hits harder anyway.”

I meant in terms of gameplay depth. The model he’s describing (slowly but continuously getting better at doing things, with monsters that level alongside you) is basically how they did things in Oblivion. In both Fallouts and Skyrim they’ve changed that formula substantially – they added perks (“new skills that shake up the dynamic”) and changed the mob-leveling formula so that it is less uniform.

I suppose, but Point Lookout in FO3 was hilariously stupid if you went there at a high level.

The level scaling there was easily just as bad as Oblivion. Really, only New Vegas did it right with enemies being static, but the people sent to kill you by the Legion/NCR being scaled to be a challenge.

Right now, I really only pull up Oblivion when I just want to take a break from games where anything actually happens. And I mean that in the best possible sense, too. After my first few attempts to play it, I now just avoid fast travel, ride everywhere, occasionally get into small skirmishes alongside some modded NPC companions that ride with me, and generally chill out rather than actually playing very hard.

I’ll have to give Skyrim and New Vegas a chance at some point. Sounds like they might actually have a game instead of a chillout simulator. ;)

This, a hundred times this. I HATE the stupid FPS design that makes you a floating camera with 2 wierdly placed arms that magically doesn’t create shadows eventhough the game has a brilliant dynamic light engine. In stealth games this is even more important since you will be sneaking about in dimly lit areas alot of the time.

I’ve lurked RPS for years and registered just to note how much this game is looking to be like the perfect game I’ve always had in my mind. I just hope to every god that has ever been worshipped that it isn’t plagued by technical problems. And that it actually turns out to be exactly what Arkane have been making it look like.

Looks like you may get your hands on something akin to an 18th century cavalry saber.

Arguably the finest sword ever built, combining aspects of European, East Asian and Middle Eastern sword concepts into a single weapon that, unfortunately, barely came into it’s own before being replaced by firearms.

The power and resilience of European steel combined with the finesse and precision of Japanese swords.

Just the fact I’ll get to use one in this game is enough to make me want it.

While I’m sure the combat situations created by firearms had a significant effect on sword design, Europeans were moving towards a curved single edged blade before the adoption of firearms.

The grossemessier, falchion and other such weapons were examples of some of the finer adoptions of single bladed curved weapons, but they still maintained much of the bulk of their other European cousins.

I’d say the firearms would have had the most effect on the weight of the weapon, as firearms negated armor, meaning weapons could be much lighter due to not having to cut through a steel plate.

A funny theory some war historians have is that, due to firearms being so bad at first, if some army had decided to take the field in old-school plate, with swords, they probably could have destroyed late 17th and early 18th century gun users quite easily, but armor and helmets had become “unmanly” in the culture at the time.

Even taken as a “cool flashy trailer”, this makes the protagonist feel too much like a jediwizardsuperhero for my taste.

The setting and visual design look great, but I’d be more interested without the time stopping and superhuman athleticism. Limitations build tension and necessitate clever planning. Whereas the ability to just bust into a room and use your superpowers to kill all the guards in a straight-up brawl undermines the combat-averse play styles (see the later Assassin’s Creed games).

Still curious about the game, but this trailer does little to get me excited for it.

Interestingly they never called it magic; the word they keep using is ‘supernatural’. Maybe this is to downplay the traditional association of ‘magic is done by wizards’ or ‘magic is shooting fire out of your hands’.

Then again, Bioshock let you shoot fire out of your hands, and they never said it was magic. What do we call that, genepunk?

I guess lots of games use magic in one form or another even if they never say so outright. I mean, Mass Effect’s biotics were straight-up wizards transplanted into a sci-fi setting, weren’t they?

This is looking so astonishingly good that I’m all but convinced that the actual game won’t be able to live up to the impossibly high expectations set by the promo material. See also: Spore, Black And White.

Losing interest rapidly. Awesome, inspired dark-ages-steam-punk mish-mash of a world. But the rooftop parkour, and the “super powers” give the impression this is designed for Assassin’s Creed / Prototype fans. i.e. People that aren’t looking for a deep, subtle, experience, and just want to Backstab Shit. None of that was necessary in Thief, but I guess that isn’t the sort of game Arkane are trying to make. Shame.

Well, Deus Ex had lots of superhuman offensive skills as well, but you just didn’t need to use them. I still hope for something similar with this. If what is shown here would be the only aspect of gameplay it would turn out to be quite a letdown.

I think this trailer will be the start of my hype fast for Dishonored. I already know that the game is interesting and will likely buy it. Knowing exactly what I’d get ruined saints row the third slightly for me, there were so few surprises.

It kinda seems like their marketing is trying to capture the same audience with this game. The trailer reminded me an awful lot of Irrational’s Bioshock teasers with the first person camera and the various powers and stuff.

I’m more confident Arkane will be able to deliver something closer to the Looking Glass legacy than Bioshock was able to provide, though.

So do we know anything, you know, real about this game? I sort of developed a Pavlovian reaction of getting excited whenever RPS mentions it, but then I remember I’m still about to learn anything of value, other than the rather vague words “immersive sim” have been used at some point, which might or might not mean anything.

I’m not sure if they’ve played with human proportion, or if it’s just tighter trousers, but I like the narrow, gangly look the people have. Certainly a pleasant change from barrel-necked chunk marines, or even the quasi-realistic overladen soldiers.

“Killing me won’t solve anything…. slice”
That was sweet, I hate unnecessarily long death scenes or filler dialogue. Super excited for this game, love the atmosphere (not surprised coming from the guy who made City 17) and really hope the combat is meaty like Dark Messiah was… time to forget about this game until it comes out!

That looks amazing. Like Mirror’s Edge only dirtier scenery and you can kill people when you want to rather than having to steal a gun first, and only getting a few shot from each gun. Oh, and giant things that look like HL2 striders.

I enjoyed this trailer more with the sound off. Mewonders when the depth and breadth of quality in film music (the score) and acting . . . well, I’ll just curtail my rhetorical query to music. As game trailers go, the music is passable. But I’ve found that this is the standard for quality of video game scores and video game music: merely passable at best. No, I’m not a musicologist nor audiophile [swats away hecklers]. But do any agree with me that the quality of contemporary video game visuals, simulation, characterization, story, etc., are far, far above the quality of video game music in general (i.e., you, too, turn off the music in almost all games you play).